PITTSBURGH—The robot-development skills of the Girls of Steel, a team of high-school-age girls from the Pittsburgh area, are being tested at the FIRST Robotics Competition Championship, April 23-26 in St. Louis, Mo. Several team members, however, already have put those skills to practical use in helping to build a robot for Autodesk, a leader in 3D design software.

PITTSBURGH—The ability of individuals to store and instantly access thousands of their photos online has become a commonplace luxury, but the sheer size of these archives can be intimidating. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, have found people might actually enjoy their collections more by giving up a bit of control and learning to wait.

The Software Engineering Institute Blog features a method to help analysts prioritize the most malicious of new malware strains. Jeff Schneider, research professor of robotics, and Edward McFowland III, a master’s student in the Machine Learning Department and a Ph.D. candidate in the Heinz College, were part of the project team that developed the new approach.

PITTSBURGH—Google vice president Andrew W. Moore has been selected as the new dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s renowned School of Computer Science (SCS), effective this August. Moore, a distinguished computer scientist with expertise in machine learning and robotics, served as a professor of computer science and robotics at CMU before being named founding director of Google’s Pittsburgh engineering office in 2006.